Monday, May 07, 2012

Back For Hannah Day!

You told her you’d come right back for her once you were settled in the big city and you had a place for you and her to stay. That was seventeen years ago.

“So you just think you can waltz right back in here and throw all your rotten money around and all those years will disappear?” Hannah will ask.

Hannah’s bouncing a four-year-old on her knee. Her seven and nine-year-old are tugging at the hem of her dress.

Tell her you know it was wrong of you to wait this long. But you fell into a bad crowd in New York City.

“Performance art was still kind of big when I got into town,” explain. “Lots of onstage nudity, lots of dance studies, lots of poems rattled off in poetry slam cadence.”

You didn’t want Hannah to see how you’d fallen prey to them. You didn’t want her to be corrupted by their questionable artistic focus the way you had been.

“The shows were just insufferable,” tell her.

“Did you do stuff with your penis onstage then?” Hannah will ask.

“I’m not proud to say that I did,” tell her. “Penis puppetry, glow-in-the-dark light sabering, and I did one entire solo show where I delivered a 45 minute scolding to my naked junk. Won an Obie for that one.”

And now that you’re big and famous, a monologist who’s crossed over into supporting roles in films, she’s just supposed to pick up and follow you to the city? What’s to stop you from veering off again into some new scene like Storytelling?

“I can’t promise anything,” tell her.

Hannah will tell you how her husband Johnny nursed her back from heartbreak after you never returned for her. He convinced her to accept his love even if she couldn’t love him back, and he filled her with the children you never gave her. And now that things are convenient for you to come back for her, she’s just supposed to toss him aside?

“Pretty much,” tell her. Then show her the apartment you bought for you and her and her kids with all your rotten money.

“Let me just write him a note,” Hannah will say, before packing a few things from her ramshackle home and following you back to the big time.